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Back Beautiful Graves Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. START READING
  5. PLAYLIST
  6. PROLOGUE
  7. PART 1
  8. ONE
  9. TWO
  10. THREE
  11. FOUR
  12. FIVE
  13. SIX
  14. SEVEN
  15. EIGHT
  16. NINE
  17. TEN
  18. ELEVEN
  19. TWELVE
  20. THIRTEEN
  21. FOURTEEN
  22. FIFTEEN
  23. SIXTEEN
  24. SEVENTEEN
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. PART 2
  29. TWENTY-ONE
  30. TWENTY-TWO
  31. TWENTY-THREE
  32. TWENTY-FOUR
  33. TWENTY-FIVE
  34. TWENTY-SIX
  35. TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. TWENTY-NINE
  38. EPILOGUE
  39. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  40. PREVIEW: PLAYING WITH FIRE
  41. PROLOGUE
  42. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Even when she doesn’t answer, I can feel her presence. I shake my head, rolling my eyes. “No, we didn’t have a fight. He asked me to come here. What the heck?”

I pull out my phone to call him. I’m swiping the screen when I hear a voice behind me.

“Your turn.”

I whip my head around. Joe is standing there, among the graves. The most beautiful Graves I have ever seen. In a peacoat and with tousled hair.

“My turn?” I swivel to him fully. There is not enough air, not enough oxygen for me to fully function.

“To save me.”

“How?” I want to know. I think I might know, but I want to hear it.

His face breaks into a heartbreaking smile of the Joe Graves variety. “Be my forever, Ever. Be my wife. The mother of my children. The person I file joint taxes with. I want it all. The good and the bad. The boring and the interesting. And the in between, which we will determine ourselves.”

I know what he is asking, even if he doesn’t go down on one knee.

Even when he doesn’t produce a ring.

Even when we are both as still as the gravestones we are surrounded by.

In another world, in another universe, we’d have been married. Maybe even with a kid. In another universe, maybe Mom would still be with us. Maybe tonight, we’d be having dinner while she babysat our child. And then there’s another world. One where Joe and I went our separate ways. One where Joe is asking someone else to marry him right about now—maybe Presley—and I’m sitting in my room, rearranging my album collection and still hating my life.

There are so many versions to reality. All of them dictated by the slightest decision. But right now, I know I made the right one.

I reach my arm between us, opening my palm. Guiding him to safety.

“Come with me,” I say, paying him back for all those years when he saved me from drowning. “There’s another chapter in our story I want to write.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was terrifying to write, but I’m happy I wrote it nonetheless, because it threw me out of my comfort zone. Change is a scary place, but it is the only place where you can grow, especially as an artist. I’m incredibly grateful for the support and the encouragement from the following people who helped me in this journey:

Tijuana Turner, Vanessa Villegas, and Ratula Roy, for reading and rereading this book over and over again. Yamina Kirky, Marta Bor, Sarah Plocher, Pang Theo, Jan Cassie—you ladies are my ride or die. Special thanks to Parker and Ava, who chanted YES, YOU CAN every time I thought I couldn’t. There’s a slight chance you were right.